hello old skooler back for new lessons

[jentulman]

Hi, I'm Phil and I'm an alcohol... no hold on wrong forum.

Hi, I used to be a big fan of the Amiga, the A500+ was my first machine all of my own, a whooping £250 including monitor ex demo from our local independant high street p.c. seller, back when they still existed Finally I could play all those great games without having to nag a friend into letting me round to theirs.  

I've not used it for ages though, I fell into the ibm pc clone craze aloing with 99% of everybody else, but yesterday whilst trying to think of cheap ways to control my music software on stage I flashed back to using octamed and decided to break open the boxes and see what I've got.
So sitting next to me are 2 vanilla A500+'s, an A590 and a GVP Impact II with about 200meg of drive between them, a midi interface and some form  and a big bag'o'floppies.

What I really want to know now though, before I clear enough desk to fit my trusty Philips CM8833-II (still in use as a games console display) and one of the machines is....

Is it going to be worth it? Am I going to be stuck with octamed for pumping out midi, or have there been developments in the sequencing software side of things?
Am I going to *have* to buy a newer version of the O.S.?

Sorry loads of questions straight away and loads of browsing still to do, so I'll finish with another Hello and hope to see you all regularly on my new amiga adventures.

[Linchpin]

Hi phil > Welcome to Amiga.org

The guys here are well in the know, if you need anything just ask.

Search the forums for OS4, Its the new version of the Amiga operating system, running on the new(ish) AmigaOne hardware.

Cheers

Kev

[x56h34]

Make sure you open up those A500+ units and remove/replace the internal clock batteries. They have most likely leaked acid onto the motherboard by now, but if you are lucky, maybe not. :-) In any case, it's be wise to replace them as through time, due to old age, the NiCd batteries that Commodore used on most of the Amiga computers out there tend to leak acid which slowly starts to eat up traces on the motherboard.

[Fats]

jentulman wrote:
Is it going to be worth it? Am I going to be stuck with octamed for pumping out midi, or have there been developments in the sequencing software side of things?
Am I going to *have* to buy a newer version of the O.S.?

One of the most famous amiga sequencers is Bars'n'Pipes. If it is compatible or usable on your machine you'll have to find out yourself.

Staf.

[InTheSand]

Hi,

Definitely get your old A500 going! Always worth it, getting an old machine going again!

As for OctaMED, it's still alive and well - there's a PC version now, renamed back to MED, and it's pretty well featured if you're used to the SoundTracker way of creating music. Web site is here, a trial is available for download and it's pretty inexpensive to get the full version.

Plus it'll load Amiga OctaMED/MED files, as well as a variety of MOD formats.

 - Ali